Eleanor Kasrils obituary

Eleanor Kasrils, who has died aged 73, was a leading figure in the anti-apartheid struggle. Married for 45 years to Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa's former minister of intelligence, Eleanor shared his life on the run from the security forces and in exile in Britain. Among the first women to be held without trial under South Africa's 90-day detention laws, in 1963 she escaped from custody and – in an episode worthy of the Scarlet Pimpernel – fled the country in disguise.

In 2000 Eleanor received amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for bombing the Durban security police offices, stealing dynamite, destroying electricity pylons, illegally crossing the Botswana border and escaping from police custody.

She was born Eleanor Logan in Kilmarnock, Scotland, into a family of railway engineers, moving in her infancy to Durban in Natal, where her father was a bookseller. She was educated in Durban and studied art at a local technical college. In later life, she studied geology, graduating as a technician. She was married and divorced by the age of 24, raising Brigid – her daughter by her first marriage – as a single mother. She joined the Congress of Democrats in the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre, in which police shot dead 69 people during a demonstration against the pass laws. That year she met Ronnie, and after becoming involved in African National Congress (ANC) underground activities, she was detained in 1963.

Held at Fort Napier – an asylum in Natal – she planned her escape with care, first of all going on hunger strike for six days and then faking a mental breakdown. She set up lines of communication with Ronnie and with Bram Fischer, the barrister and underground leader of the South African Communist party.

With a scarf over her head, she calmly walked out of Fort Napier through a gate left unlocked by a sympathetic nurse. At a safe house, she cropped her hair and dressed as a boy. She met up with Ronnie and they decided to try to make it to the Botswana (then Bechuanaland) border. Ronnie dressed as a prosperous businessman, while Eleanor put on traditional Muslim garb. They were driven by a veteran of the escape route, Babla Saloojee, and travelled with two other passengers: the father of the activist Ruth First, fleeing the aftermath of the Rivonia raid, and a local activist dressed as a holy man with a long grey beard, to lend authenticity to the group.

They managed to avoid border patrols until they reached their cross-over point, where a ladder was waiting to get them over the fence. As they were saying goodbye, Eleanor spotted a dust cloud in the distance, on the South African side of the border. They hid behind boulders as a police car roared past. Then, staggering under the weight of their luggage – with Eleanor's brown face cream beginning to streak in the heat – the couple made it over the fence into the British Protectorate, where they were granted political asylum.

While working in the ANC office in Dar es Salaam, now in Tanzania, they married at the end of 1964, and the following year, Eleanor arrived in London to seek treatment against malaria. Ronnie soon joined her, and they set up house in north London, where Eleanor worked as assistant to the ANC president, Oliver Tambo, while Ronnie – a senior figure in Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) intelligence, the ANC's active military wing – travelled the frontline states.

In London, Eleanor came up against supporters of the South African government, including the Tory MP for Basingstoke, Andrew Hunter. She found herself in the headlines when Hunter claimed that ANC members were being trained by the IRA and that Ronnie was "recruiting terrorists" in London. She replied with a tough statement, challenging the MP to repeat his charges outside the Commons: "I will be more than happy for a British jury to decide which of us is telling the truth and which of us is lying." Hunter did not take up her challenge.

Following the political settlement, Eleanor returned to South Africa in 1990 with Tambo, who had suffered a stroke, and continued to work for him until his death in 1993. She also travelled extensively with Ronnie in the course of his ministerial duties. But Ronnie, seen as a loyalist to Thabo Mbeki, lost office in the palace coup that saw Mbeki's overthrow last year, and he and Eleanor subsequently settled near Cape Town.

Eleanor is survived by Ronnie, their two sons, Andrew and Christopher, and Brigid.

• Eleanor Kasrils, political activist, born 9 March 1936; died 8 November 2009

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